Hurd Unveils Oracle's New Exadata Database Machine

In a keynote speech Monday at Oracle's OpenWorld conference, newly minted co-president Mark Hurd unveiled the latest member of the company's Exadata product line, which combines Oracle software and Sun hardware in a tightly integrated solution.

Data warehousing has historically been technically challenging given the massive amounts of data being stored and the speed with which users are trying to access and analyze it. The Exadata Database Machine X2-8 adds beefier processors, more memory and stronger security to cope with enterprises' fast-growing data warehousing needs, Hurd told a packed house at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

Mark Hurd At Oracle OpenWorld

Hurd described Exadata as "the most successful new product Oracle has launched" and talked about the pain points it seeks to address. "Data has always been spread out across discs -- you send queries and find the data, but why do queries take so long? Exadata, in its first release, changed the game," he said.

The rapid growth of data stores is driving demand for more powerful databases, and the Exadata Database Machine X2-8 comes with plenty under the hood. It features two 8-socket database servers with a total of 128 Intel CPU cores and 2 terabytes of memory, as well as 14 Exadata Storage Servers with 168 Intel CPU cores and up to 336 terabytes of raw storage capacity.

The Exadata X2-8 comes with five terabytes of Smart Flash Cache that frequently accesses data in order to speed performance and throughput. It also features full database encryption to sooth fears companies may have about putting all their sensitive data in a single piece of hardware.

"Security of data is a big issue," Hurd said in the keynote. "When I put my data in one place, I want to make sure it's secure."

In addition to the new Exadata X2-8 full-rack configuration, Oracle is also offering Exadata X2-2 quarter-rack, half-rack and full-rack configurations.

Meanwhile, John Fowler, executive vice president of Oracle's hardware business, took the wraps off the company's new SPARC T3, a 16-core server processor that's designed for entry level to midrange volume servers. Oracle also launched new SPARC T3 systems running Oracle Solaris and Oracle VM for SPARC that have been integrated with Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications.

This week at OpenWorld, Oracle will be previewing Solaris 11, its next generation release that's slated to be delivered to customers next year. In addition to being easier to deploy and maintain, Solaris 11 will eliminate 50 percent of restarts for updates and allow customers to run all their middle tiers and back end apps on a single machine, said Fowler, who described this as a "complete cloud-in-a-box."